It’s one of the biggest buzzwords in business today: innovation. Whether its start-ups in the technology sector or giants like Comcast, entrepreneurs and business owners are investing millions of dollars in an attempt to stay on the forefront of the innovation curve.
But what does it truly mean to be innovative? How can the concept be applied not just to new ideas, but existing concepts and structures across the state? How can we adopt policy that attracts innovative companies to the Commonwealth?
November 20, 1:00pm – 2:30pm
Location: Main Hall
Panelists
Ellen Weber
Executive Director
Robin Hood Ventures
Ellen Weber is the Executive Director of Robin Hood Ventures, a leading angel group helping to fuel startup growth in the Philadelphia region, and the Executive Director of Temple University’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute. At Temple, she is an Assistant Professor, Entrepreneurship.
She is the Managing Director and co-founder of Antiphony Partners, LLC, a strategic consulting firm that specializes in helping companies create sustainable value through innovation. She was involved in the growth of Investor Force, a provider of technology-based solutions for institutional investment professionals. Additionally, she spent twelve years at Shared Medical Systems She was also a senior consultant for Andersen Consulting. Recently, Region’s Business, Philadelphia Business Journal, Med City News, KYW New Radio and USA Today featured Ellen’s research on growing entrepreneurship.
Ellen was the COO and co-founder of VisionMine, which allows corporate clients collaborative access to early start-up innovations, new technologies, and entrepreneurs that solve business problems. Ellen serves as angel-in-residence at Temple University’s Innovation and Entrepreneurial Institute, was an advisory board member of Philly Startup Leaders, championed the Philly Tech Meet up, and is a board member of the Alliance of Women Entrepreneurs. Ellen earned her Bachelor’s of Science in Economics from The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania.
Stephen J. Andriole
Thomas G. Labrecque Professor
The Villanova School of Business
Stephen J. Andriole was the Director of the Cybernetics Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he funded the MIT Media Lab, Yale’s artificial intelligence Labs, open source analysis, early warning systems and research supporting the ARPANET (that evolved into the Internet & World Wide Web).
He was the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President of Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. (where numerous Internet companies were taken public), and the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President for Technology at CIGNA Corporation.
Dr. Andriole is currently the Thomas G. Labrecque Professor of Business Technology at Villanova University where he teaches and directs applied research in business technology management. He is formerly a Professor of Information Systems & Electrical & Computer Engineering at Drexel University and the George Mason Institute Professor and Chairman of the Department of Information Systems & Systems Engineering at George Mason University.
He is a Fellow at the Cutter Consortium, and has consulted extensively over the years for industry and government. He was the recipient of the ITEC Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to IT and received an honorary doctorate from LaSalle University also for his lifetime contributions to information technology.
Some of his 30 books include Cognitive Systems Engineering (McGraw Hill, 1995), another book for McGraw-Hill entitled Managing Systems Requirements: Methods, Tools & Cases (1996), books on the 2nd Digital Revolution (2005) and Technology Due Diligence (2009) – for IGI Press and Best Practices in Business Technology Management (2009) and IT’s All About the People (2011) for Auerbach Publications (the winner of the #4 Ten Best Business- IT Books of 2011 from CIO Insight).
His most recent books include Social Business Intelligence (co-author, Ascendigm Press, 2013), Avoiding #Fail (co-author, Ascendigm Press, 2013) and Ready Technology: Fast-Tracking New Business Technologies (Taylor & Francis, 2014). He has published articles in the Cutter IT Journal, Software Development, IEEE Software, the Communications of the ACM, the Communications of the AIS, IEEE IT Professional, the Journal of Cases in Information Technology, the Journal of Information Technology Education and the Journal of Information Technology Research, among many other journals. He is a regular contributor to Forbes where he writes about all things digital.
He did his undergraduate work at LaSalle University and earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at the University of Maryland @ College Park.
Mark McAdoo
President & CEO
HealthQx
Mark McAdoo is co founder and President & CEO of HealthQx, a software analytics company serving the healthcare industry. Mr. McAdoo is a serial entrepreneur having started and sold three different companies.
Prior to launching HealthQx, Mr. McAdoo served as a Vice President of DST Health Solutions following the successful sale of IntelliSource Healthcare Solutions in July of 2011.
Mark McAdoo was the founder of IntelliSource Healthcare Solutions. IntelliSource was founded in 2003 and Mr. McAdoo was instrumental in the growth of the business. He has extensive experience in the healthcare software industry. He brings more than 20 years of experience in building and operating successful companies. Mr. McAdoo was the founder of FrontLine Solutions, a venture capital-backed software company that was successfully sold in 2002. Prior to founding FrontLine and IntelliSource Healthcare Solutions, he was the Director of Business Development for IBM Corporation.
Mark attended Drexel University – LeBow College of Business. Mark served on the Board of Governors of Drexel for four years. He participates in Drexel University’s Baiada Institute for Entrepreneurialism and was recently elected to the Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business Advisory Board. He holds an MBA degree from the Columbia Business School. Mark has been active in the software venture capital market and is on the board of a variety of technology companies.
Laurie Actman
COO
Penn Center for Innovation
Laurie Actman serves as the COO of the Penn Center for Innovation (PCI) a new organization at the University of Pennsylvania that catalyzes creative commercialization opportunities with the private sector.
Previously, she served as Deputy and Interim Director for the Energy Efficient Building Hub (EEB Hub) in Philadelphia, one of five Energy Innovation Hubs established by the Department of Energy under the Obama Administration. In that role she lead and managed the EEB Hub’s activities related to accelerating new retrofit solutions and adoption of retrofits by small and medium sized buildings throughout the country.
To foster regional economic development, she created and implemented an incubator within the EEB Hub’s Navy Yard Headquarters in partnership with Ben Franklin Franklin Technology Partners to foster the emergence of new, affordable technical solutions for energy efficiency in buildings. One of the incubator tenants that was hand selected by Actman, Luxtech, received a round of $1million angel funding from Robin Hood Ventures in April, 2014 to scale marketing and distribution of its LED lightbulb technology.
Previous to joining the EEB Hub, Laurie was the Director of Strategic Partnerships and Public Policy for Viridity Energy, a leading-edge smart grid and load management technology company where she developed projects and partnerships with cities, transit agencies and large energy.
She joined Viridity in March 2010 after serving as a consultant for two years to Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, helping to launch the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and the Metropolitan Caucus. Her work through both those efforts helped lead to the region’s success in winning a $25 million Recovery through Retrofit grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for regional commercial and residential energy efficiency and retrofit activities.
Actman has worked for several other notable economic development organizations including serving as Chief Policy Officer for the CEO Council for Growth, a leadership group coordinated by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, the Central Philadelphia Development Corporation and Greater Philadelphia First.
She received her undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis and a Masters Degree from UNC-Chapel Hill. Actman lives in Bala Cywnyd with her husband and three children.
Jonathan Brassington
CEO & Co-Founder
LiquidHub
Jonathan Brassington is the CEO, co-founder, partner and member of the Board of Directors at LiquidHub, a digital transformation company providing customer engagement and technology solutions to global corporations. Founded in 2001, LiquidHub is focused on fueling digital transformation to solve unique business challenges through technology for clients in financial services, insurance, healthcare, life sciences and retail. With over 2,000 associates, the company has an international presence with operations in North America, Asia and Europe.
Sponsored by:
Video of this event will be available after the conference.
